Writing Science: Literacy and Discursive Power (Composition, Literacy, and Culture)

This volume focuses on the use of language and literacy issues in scientific research and in science classrooms. Working within the theoretical framework of systemic functional analysis, the book explores the evolution of scientific discourse in the English-speaking world, and the apprenticeship of students into the discourse in secondary schools.

The distinguished linguist M.A.K. Halliday and his colleague, J.R. Martin, show scientific discourses at work in a range of historical, contemporary, and cross-cultural sites: from the works of the nineteenth-century scientists to other cultures’ textual representations of the natural world; from school students’ writings on scientific knowledge and procedures to the construction of a “Secret English” of science in secondary school textbooks and classroom talk. While the book draws specifically from examples of Australian schooling, it both refers to and has immediate application to schooling in North America.

Running across these essays is a commitment not just to remaking science as a humane endeavor, but also to developing new analytic perspectives for critiquing science. They will be of particular interest to science and literacy educators and to educational linguists teaching in the field of English.